


Jesses

by prairiecrow



Series: Lethe's Curse [2]
Category: ReBoot (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Falconry, Gen, Memory Alteration, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 16:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ties that bind don't always work quite the way we want them to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jesses

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Takes place on the world of Lethe, where Bob and Megabyte awoke stripped of their memories, formed an alliance of convenience — and found themselves, one day, profoundly physically changed. 2) Set before Bob and Megabyte's physical transformations and before they are expelled from the Court of the White Queen. 3) Bob: http://starman-imaging.com/reboot/episodes/infectd/infectd1174r.jpg and Megabyte http://starman-imaging.com/reboot/episodes/infectd/infectd1100r.jpg

"Now!" Bob said, and the boy who was Orosa's assistant pulled the thin rope attached to the small cage wooden he'd set on the ground at Bob's feet.

For a couple of seconds Bob didn't think the rabbit was going to emerge — but then it appeared in a blur of grey and cream, checking for an instant to glance with huge dark eyes at the sunny snow-covered meadow around it and the fortress wall that loomed overhead before streaking away across the white expanse in huge leaps, racing for the tree line about forty yards to the south. When it had gained just under ten yards on Bob's position he plucked the hood from his falcon's head and thrust the wrist it was perched upon upward, releasing the raptor in a flare of swift wings and a jingle of little bells; it arrowed into the pale blue sky, hovered briefly on an air current, then plunged to earth again — 

— to strike nothing but snow with its cruel claws. The rabbit had zigged at the last possible second, and the falcon emitted a shrill cry of frustration as the prey animal continued on its trajectory, darting and weaving and quickly vanishing into the bushy tangle of bare branches that bordered the old-growth woodland, leaving only widely-spaced tracks behind.

"Hard luck," Orosa drawled from a yard or so behind Bob's left shoulder, while the other three students also gathered at the field's edge with their jessed raptors looked various degrees of disappointed, uncomfortable and smug.

"You can say that again," Bob muttered, but his attention was on his bird, which was flaring its pinions irritably and glaring in the direction of the vanished rabbit. With a leap and a flick of those powerful wings it gained altitude again — and did not turn back in Bob's direction, instead soaring at a leisurely pace toward the heights of the winter trees. Bob whistled after it, but was resolutely ignored. 

"Hmph," Orosa opined, and Bob, who had come to hear a great deal in the old falconer's monosyllabic statements, could clearly discern: _Not that I'm surprised, mind you._  Of the current group of four aspiring hunters he'd been training for the past sixteen days Bob had consistently proven to be the least adept in terms of relating to his avian companions: two had already decided that he wasn't worth coming back to, and had required a long search on foot and Osora's experienced coaxing to convince them to return to their captivity. Staring up at the recalcitrant bird, Bob frowned and was just drawing breath to try a louder and more pre-emptory whistle when a deep, familiar and totally unexpected voice offered its own commentary from behind him:

"Having some difficulty, are we, Bob?"

Instantly the frown became a scowl as he turned on his heel, both surprised and displeased: "What the — Megabyte? What are _you_ doing out here?"

The tall broad virus chuckled, a smirk curving his virulently green lips. "Wouldn't you like to know?" he countered, his burning eyes now following the rapidly receding falcon. "My, that _is_  unfortunate, isn't it? And your third such loss this week, if I'm not mistaken."

"How did you —" Bob gave himself a little shake: this was not the time to be getting into an argument, when he was about to be ordered into the woods to track his lost bird. "Never mind. Look, I'm kind of —"

"Be still a moment, would you?" Megabyte didn't so much as glance sidelong at him. His gaze still fixed on the falcon, he uttered a low sound of utterly inhuman character: a sharp chirring noise, but the other four raptors present immediately reacted to it, raising their heads and craning their agile necks in his direction, even hooded as they were. His smile widened as he repeated the call much more loudly, projecting it across the expanse of earth and sky —

— and Bob's falcon, which had been about to vanish over the arch of the woods, checked in flight, hovered, then dipped its wings and came round in a long curve, returning at a considerably faster pace than it had departed. 

Still smiling insufferably, Megabyte planted his right fist on his hip and raised his left forearm as the bird swooped down and settled neatly onto the presented edge of his steel forefinger, bobbing its head and shifting its clawed feet to retain its balance as he slowly drew it down to upper chest level. Bob was staring with his mouth open a little, an expression he was fairly sure was being duplicated by the other students. At last a single word emerged: "How…?"

Megabyte and the falcon were regarding each other with a remarkably similar quality of cold predatory intensity. "Call it a certain… sympathy," the virus rumbled, his red-in-green eyes narrowing and the quality of his voice oddly… gentle? Bob gave himself another mental shake, and a figurative smack upside the head besides, for entertaining such a crazy notion: if there was any creature on Lethe more diametrically opposed to the concept of tenderness than Megabyte, he couldn't imagine what it might be. Then Megabyte was turning toward him, extending the hand that held the falcon and speaking with his usual arrogant inflection: "I suggest you take up another sport, Guardian: clearly you're not suited to anything requiring the ability to command."

Bob stepped forward to take back his wayward bird, seething, and spoke in a low voice that wouldn't carry to the others: "You got lucky, that's all."

Megabyte looked down at him with such obvious and condescending amusement that Bob almost kicked him in his greaved shin. "Be sure you tie those jesses tightly," he said pleasantly, before turning his attention and a slight bow of his square chin toward the others present. "Now if you'll excuse me, Master Orosa…?"

The falconer nodded, and they all watched the virus as he headed toward the winter forest at an easy lope, vanishing into the sleeping woodland with surprising grace and stealth for a creature of his size and mass.

Orosa shook his grizzled head. "Huh. He's likely right, you know."

"He's a _catlana_ ," Bob scoffed, "what does he know about anything outside of a book?" He fed his raptor a small gobbet of meat to remind it who was boss, then turned back toward the meadow, straightened his shoulders, and nodded to the boy, who was still staring after Megabyte with eyes as wide as the rabbit's. "Let's try that again," he said, wishing that he could find a way to put anklets and bells on all the predators in his life — and that he could compel them to return whenever he wanted them to, not merely when they decided his company was convenient.

THE END


End file.
